Friends in Youth, 396-414

396	Alas! they had been friends in youth;
	But whispering tongues can poison truth;
	And constancy lives in realms above;
	And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
400	And to be wroth with one we love,
	Doth work like madness in the brain.
	And thus it chanc'd, as I divine,
	With Roland and Sir Leoline.
	Each spake words of high disdain
405	And insult to his heart's best brother:
	They parted--ne'er to meet again!
	But never either found another
	To free the hollow heart from paining--
	They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
410	Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
	A dreary sea now flows between,
	But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
	Shall wholly do away, I ween,
	The marks of that which once hath been.

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